After intense debates over development and Rockville’s standing in a growing Montgomery County, the new City of Rockville Council will look a lot like the previous one.
All four incumbents, including Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton, were reelected in the city’s election Tuesday, according to preliminary results released by the city.
Newton garnered 4,069 votes, or 65 percent of the total votes cast and almost double the amount of votes received by challenger Sima Osdoby.
Incumbent council member Beryl Feinberg, who often sided with Newton on development issues, was the top vote-getter among council candidates with 3,387 votes. Incumbent Julie Palakovich Carr came in second in the council race with 2,947 votes and incumbent Virginia Onley came in fourth with 2,698 votes.
Mark Pierzchala, the former council member who narrowly lost to Newton for mayor in 2013, got 2,755 votes to win the open council seat left by Tom Moore, who chose not to seek re-election.
Carr, Onley and Pierzchala were running on the “Team Rockville” slate with Osdoby and first-time council candidate Clark Reed, who finished last in the nine-person race for four council seats with 2,243 votes.
It was Carr, Onley and Moore who in June voted to loosen the city ordinance that had imposed a development moratorium because some schools are over capacity.
Pierzchala, who early and often attacked Newton’s economic development record during the campaign, seems likely to vote along the lines that Moore did over the last two years.
For the first time, the winners of Tuesday’s election will serve four-year terms instead of two-year terms.
Moore often clashed with Newton behind the scenes, arguments that were made public during the campaign and even as Moore decided not to run for re-election. In her official re-election kickoff event in September, Newton compared Moore to “dealing with a 2-year-old having a meltdown.”
Of 40,749 registered voters in the city, 6,343 cast ballots, resulting in a 15.5 percent voter turnout rate. In 2013, the voter turnout rate was 16.5 percent.
The election results will be certified next week.
